


No Shadow Gonna Block The Sun

by Infinite_Monkeys



Series: All Our Yesterdays And Days To Come [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Found Family, Gen, Light Angst, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, No Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Not Canon Compliant, Self-Indulgent, the house that doesn't exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-02-28 13:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18757240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: Family isn't a fact. It's a hunch at first, then a series of decisions.Or: Five times Loki and his kids were accepted in Night Vale, and one time they decided to stay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I have bigger, more serious projects in the works. Yes, I'm writing plotless crack crossovers instead. I refuse to be ashamed.
> 
> This is technically a prequel to the first fic in this series, but can be read alone. Thank you for reading!

It might have been a weapon, or perhaps some sort of magical creature stranded from another realm, but there was something in the desert. Some energy, wild and chaotic and dark, that drew him across the sands, a relentless tug at the core of his being.

Yet no matter how far they walked, Hela perched atop Sleipnir and Jormungand leaving a wide trail in the sand behind him while Fenrir complained about the heat on the pads of his feet, the desert stretched on, rolling out towards a horizon it never quite met.

Loki was half-ready to admit defeat, to turn back and acknowledge that perhaps there was nothing, when a light rose up ahead out of the sand, crowning the silhouette of a small town. The lights were surrounded by a mystical glow, shining in colors that he doubted a mortal could fully perceive, and from in their center rose a single word traced in blood-red letters.

Arby's.

* * *

 

The trip had left the five of them tired and hungry, so he approached the first house they saw, a humble mortal dwelling with an oddly bright porch light. He'd hardly deserve to be called a villain if he could not coerce hospitality out of an isolated human household. They trudged to the door on feet half-numb from walking only to have it open a second before he could lift his hand to knock.

The face on the other side of the door was wizened with age, but the eyes that peered at him through thick spectacles were sharp and bright with life. The old woman's gaze shifted over to his children, and he braced himself and waited for her to scream or run or faint dead away.

Instead, she pulled the door open wider. “You've come a long ways to get here,” she said. “Come in.”

He stood outside for another moment, stunned, and only made to enter when she gave him a hard look, like he was a cat that had asked to go out and then hovered indecisive in the doorway. Something went through him like a frisson of energy as he crossed the threshold, and then they were all piled into a modest living room, rendered too-small by the size of his children.

“My name's Josie,” she said as she ushered them all deeper inside and motioned for them to sit. Fenrir didn't hesitate to flop onto the rug, tongue lolling out with exhaustion, and Hela was more graceful but nonetheless picked her way over to perch on an antique armchair hung with lace doilies. Sleipnir rested his head over the top of Hela's chair, and for Jormungand, words like sitting and standing held little meaning, but he draped himself across the furniture and hung listlessly.

Loki stayed standing, wary. Something about this place was off. Part of him itched to call his children back, to tell them they needed to leave right now, but he couldn't quite stomach the thought of dragging them back into the heat and the endless sand.

“I have to admit, I've never seen so many legs on one horse before,” the woman said, rummaging around in her apron before pulling out a cube of sugar and offering it to Sleipnir.

Loki cleared his throat. “He's my son.”

“Ah,” she said, and that was all. Or not quite; “Have you got any baby pictures on you by chance?”

“I have—” He started, and then stopped cold.

They didn't appear, exactly. They had always been in the shadows at the corners of the room, but he became aware of them as suddenly as if a curtain had been pulled aside. There were at least three of them in the room, creatures of painful brightness and midnight shadows, wings and eyelashes and eyes.

“So you've noticed the Erikas, have you?” she asked, and Jormungand twisted to look while Hela gave a subdued nod and Loki continued to stare.

“What...?” he tried, but the one in the farthest corner took a step forward, and the weight of its gaze paralyzed him.

“They're angels,” Josie said, “although that's not to say that we know anything about them, or their hierarchies, of course.”

The one closest let out a sound that was somewhere between a long slow hiss and a screech, like steam escaping a teakettle. Behind it a little ways, the other narrowed its entire being in much the same way a normal person might narrow their eyes.

Loki tried to swallow, but the attempt stuck painfully in his throat. “I don't think they like me.”

“They aren't sure how they feel about you yet,” the old woman said, “because they aren't sure what sort of story this is, or what role you're to play in it.”

“What does that mean?” Loki still eyed the...angel. It eyed him back much more efficiently, because it had so many more eyes.

“Usually? That the choice is yours.” She looked at him then, staring just as piercingly with her two half-blind eyes as Erika did with their...however many. “I would think you should choose carefully. Sit.”

The last word came with an abrupt change of tone back to pleasantly cheerful, and she indicated a long, worn couch. Loki sat, his legs all but folding under him after long days of walking.

“Luckily,” Josie said, “I've made too much dinner, or just the right amount, now.”

And she had. He'd no idea why an old woman would have made enough pulled pork to feed a wolf and a five-gallon drum of undressed salad, but he didn't question it, only picked carefully at the plate he'd been given. Tamales, she'd called it, and he had to admit he found it more palatable than most Midgardian food. He might even have enjoyed it if he could have relaxed.

By the time Sleipnir had finished eating his salad Hela had fallen asleep, slumped in her armchair with a half-eaten plate of tamales on the side table next to her.

Josie turned to him. “Let's talk,” she said, in a tone that allowed no argument, calmly pulling out a skein of yarn and a mismatched set of one knitting needle and one pencil. “If you're going to be staying here in town there are some things you need to know.”

“I'm not sure—” He started, but she cut him off.

“While we're talking,” she said, “you may as well make yourself useful. Hands out.”

She reached out and positioned his arms about a foot apart, then looped the yarn over them, using his hands as a makeshift instrument to keep it untangled as she worked. He couldn't say why he allowed it, but it definitely wasn't because of the ominous way Erika and Erika's stares prickled the small hairs at the back of his neck.

“So first order of business, don't go into the Dog Park,” she started. “People are not allowed in the Dog Park. Dogs,” she nodded to Fenrir, who had curled up into a rather large ball of fur once he finished his pork, “are also not allowed in the Dog Park.”

She continued, listing absurd and clearly fabricated rules while he fought not to nod off alongside his children. Her needle and pencil moved as quickly and steadily as she spoke, and she told him things like how not to antagonize the frogs because they weren't frogs, actually. No one was sure what they were or really knew anything about them except that they weren't frogs, and also they could probably summon inclement weather.

The only thing he took from it was that either he had been right, and something or someone of power was here—and they were strong enough that even the mortals recognized the results—or this old Midgardian woman was insane.

They left a little while after the sun had set, when the air had just taken on a blanketing, comforting coolness that eased something deep in his chest. He'd never cared for the dark, but it seemed to him now that it might represent a time of rest, or perhaps a time when the harsh realities of the day failed to oppress the imagination. He shook his head. There was no place or time for such fanciful thoughts, not when there were things left undone.

They left, too, with more hats than they had been wearing when they had come. Hela pulled the purple monstrosity the old woman had given her tight around her ears, looking pleased, while Fenrir batted his off his head the second they were far enough from the door to be out of visual range. Jormungand had a little blue cap that perched on his head like a bird, and Sleipnir wore a thick woolen scarf wound around his neck.

Loki resolutely did not think about the deep violet cap on his own head, or why he was wearing it. He especially did not think about the fluffy pom-pom on top.

Instead, he thought about the aura of magic that surrounded this little Midgardian town, hanging in the air like the charge before a thunderstorm. There was old magic here, deep, chaotic, and if he could find the source, it could prove _useful_.

Perhaps the secret of this town was something he could bend to his purposes, in time, to gain an advantage over his enemies.

If not, then at least he and his children could take some time to rest and recover before their next attempt at world domination.

* * *

 

Finding a place to stay in town had been far easier than Loki had expected. The house was two stories, with a bedroom on the first floor so that Sleipnir didn't have to try and navigate the stairs, and three on the second floor, which was well enough because Hela and Fenrir preferred to stay together. It seemed odd that the house was both furnished and abandoned, but no one was there to object when he'd tried to pick the lock only to find the door already open.

He'd woken in the morning to a knocking on the door, and made certain his children were safely stowed in a back room before he answered.

He pulled the door open a crack, just enough to see the source of the knocking on the other side. The young man seemed to be a completely unremarkable Midgardian, though the bright white coat he wore did strike Loki as somewhat odd. He carried a clipboard in one hand, and a pen, marked clearly with a tag made of masking tape saying "this is not a pen", in the other.

For no coherent reason, it registered somewhere in the back of Loki's mind that the stranger had very nice hair. “Erm, hello,” the stranger said. “My name is Carlos. I'm a scientist.”

Loki blinked. The scientist, Carlos, fumbled with the clipboard. “The neighbors let us know that someone had moved here last night, and I though it would be only fair to warn you, if you're planning on staying, that the house here doesn't actually exist.”

Loki blinked again. “Beg pardon?”

“This house,” Carlos said, gesturing to the walls and the doors and the roof with a motion so expansive it almost seemed excited. “It seems like it should exist, I know. There's a house on either side, so it would make more sense for it to be here than not, but, well, according to all the data, it just isn't.”

He reached out a hand to touch the doorframe, and it was as solid under his fingers as appearances made it seem. “I am afraid you must be mistaken,” he said slowly.

Carlos shook his head. A small blue bird fluttered up and perched on the railing. Or, at least, it tried. The second it stopped moving it started to fall straight _through_  the wood, and only an awkward twist and a frantic flutter saved it from hitting the ground. It flew off, chirping its indignation. “I'm afraid the data is conclusive,” Carlos said, and Loki stepped past him, resting a hand on the railing.

It, too, seemed solid. When he pushed against it, it creaked gently and threatened to splinter.

Part of him wanted to turn on the scientist and press for more information, to grab him by the starched lapels of his white coat and demand answers. But the memory of Erika's eyes, dark and hauntingly many, and the press of the town's magic kept him still. It felt almost as though he were being watched, assessed, the town itself eyeing him like a predator in wait to see what he might do.

 _Absurd_ , a part of him insisted, but he kept his hands to himself and put on his most convincing smile.

“It's strange, I know,” Carlos said, with an uncomfortable amount of sympathy in his voice. “I came from out of town too, so I know it can be hard to adjust. If you ever need someone to talk to...”

“Luke,” Loki said when the man trailed off, “you may call me Luke.” After all, after the debacle in New York, it was not exactly safe to be Loki here. Though he didn't care particularly much about that, the risk extended to being Lokason or Lokadottir, so adopting a false name for the time being might be wise.

“If you ever need  someone to talk to, Luke, I'm here,” Carlos finished earnestly. “I think I'm finally starting to get used to life here, and I'd be happy to pass on anything that might be useful.”

Part of him itched to reject the offer, to insist that he had no need of a mortal's condescending compassion and no time for entreaties to friendship. But he did need information about the town, and it would not be strategic to throw away a potential source because of pride. “Yes,” he said, and managed to avoid gritting his teeth. “I'd like that. Thank you for your kindness.”

“We should get coffee sometime.” Carlos nodded. “Assuming you drink coffee, of course. And that it isn't a day where all the coffee has been replaced by cups of angry fire ants. You can usually tell based on the general amount of screaming.”

“…that sounds like a fine idea,” Loki managed, and he made his way through the few more pleasantries that remained as Carlos excused himself and left.

Back in the house, he found his children in the downstairs bedroom, huddled around a small radio.

Hela met his eyes, and said “they're talking about us” before darting a nervous glance back to the radio. Loki went still.

“--which brings the average number of legs per citizen back to an even three-and-a-half,” a deep voice said, and then there was a pause.

“Listeners,” the voice continued at last. “I have just been informed that a lost civilization has been discovered in the stock room in the back of the Ralph's. The store wants you to know that this lost civilization will be on sale for half off, given that it's impossible to tell whether or not the expiration date has already passed.”

Loki reached over and switched off the radio. “What did he say?” The question left a tightness in his chest he hadn't expected. At some point, he'd need to track down this journalist and have an earnest...conversation about privacy and how much Loki valued it. For now, though, he put it aside and focused on the faces of his children.

“Just that we moved to town and we're new here,” Hela said, and Jormungand nodded his agreement. “Papa, is that true? Are we staying?”

He shook his head. “For a short while,” he said. “Only until we have discovered that which we seek.”

His children did an admirable job of hiding their disappointment. If he hadn't spent centuries raising them, he himself wouldn't have noticed it.

Even more subtle, however, was the odd pang somewhere deep in his stomach at the thought.

He pushed it down. Midgard could be a place to conquer, a temporary place to rest, the site of their struggle and eventual triumph.

It would be nothing short of ridiculous to call the place home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back for another chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments on the last chapter, I appreciate every one of you. :) 
> 
> Fair warning: this chapter contains a fair amount of (non-graphic) violence and some internalized fantasy racism.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The dark elves were _extinct_.

Loki had learned this simple fact in some of his earliest lessons, reciting it back with other notable events in the history of the Nine Realms before he could so much as lift a sword. Bor, Odin's father, had wiped out the entire race.

Svartalfheim had been reduced to an empty and barren wasteland. No dark elves lived there.

Dark elves living in the other realms had flocked back to Malekith and his army during the last flagging months of the war, so no dark elves should be found on Asgard or Vanaheim or Alfheim.

And there should _certainly_  not be a settlement of dark elves in the back storage room of a Midgardian grocer, so the sight before him made absolutely no sense.

Were he alone, the sight of a hoard of dark elves marching through the market would not have alarmed him overmuch. The way they lashed out, striking at terrified mortals, might have even amused him.

But today, he'd brought Hela with him, so at the first sign of danger he'd stowed her behind a shelf of baked beans  and dropped into a fighting crouch. The elves seemed to be using knives and swords rather than ranged weapons, which was good, but there was rather a lot of them, which was less good.

The daggers he summoned dropped into his hands, the familiar weight almost comforting after so much time spent traveling and then settling.

One of the invaders storming the store caught sight of him, and the elf charged forward and shouted something the Allspeak didn't translate. Loki sidestepped at the last possible second, nearly overbalancing in the scramble to get out of the way. By the time the elf straightened, he'd already sent out a handful of illusory doubles to mask his location.

A gangly teenager in a green apron rushed past him, the same youth who had greeted them at the door. He brandished a hammer over his head and screamed, with all the intensity of an Asgardian war cry, “Sirs! I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave the premises!”

The elf nearest snarled, and Loki barely had time to sink a dagger through his armored breastplate and keep him from striking down the teen.

The elf collapsed into a pile, and the employee shouted “Clean up on aisle four!” before charging at the next closest elf.

He didn't have time to watch the outcome, because three more elves rushed towards him. A sharp kick sent the first tumbling into a pyramid of cans, which in turn spilled over the floor, clanking and tumbling out in all directions.

“Cleanup on aisle five!” the teen shouted, so at least he was still alive.

With a speed born mostly of panic, he managed a flurry of adder-quick strikes that took down the second of his attackers.

The third, however, caught him off guard, and the elf rushed forward with a charge that sent them both crashing through a row of shelves and into the next aisle.

“Cleanup on aisle—all the aisles,” came muffled from a little ways away.

He twisted and threw the dark elf into the far wall, then followed up with a dagger that ensured he wouldn't be tackling him again.

He spun around, trying to regain his bearings, but the short-lived burst of satisfaction at getting the better of his opponent faded into panic. He couldn't see Hela. _He couldn't see Hela_. He spun, looking for his little girl somewhere in the melee, but he couldn't spot her.

His heart turned to ice in his chest. He could continue as he was, using his doubles as decoys and picking off the elves with his daggers, but it would take too long, be too _slow_. He had no way of protecting Hela in the meanwhile, no guarantee she would be safe.

He had another option, though, one that he hated with the very core of his being. One that he'd spent weeks and months trying to forget existed. He could take the enemies out slowly and put Hela in danger, or he could break every promise he'd made to himself since he'd discovered the hateful truth.

He didn't hesitate.

With a feeling like being doused in warm water, he allowed his skin to shift, resolutely not looking down at the blue he knew had to be spreading like cancer over his skin. He dug down deep into his fear, his worry for his daughter, and when the next wave of enemies charged he froze the whole group solid with a single gesture.

He pushed forward, freezing with a touch, a thought, passing enemies and leaving statues in his wake as he moved. “Hela?” he called, trying to keep the uncertainty out of his voice. “Darling, where are you?”

“Here!” He let his breath out all at once and charged down the side aisle, only breathing again when he caught sight of the small figure standing, unhurt, by a display of canned beans. “Papa, look!” she said, and something relaxed him him further when the high note in her voice came from excitement rather than fear.

She slipped out of the embrace he crushed her into to point, and he followed her finger to a Midgardian girl, tall enough that if she had been an Asgardian, he'd have guessed she was several centuries older than Hela. “I made a friend. Her name's Tamika.”

“Hey,” Tamika greeted without looking up, because she had a rake in one hand, a pair of bone shears in the other, and an elven warrior pinned to the floor.

His first thought was that he approved, fiercely, of his daughter's choice in friends.

He reached out to freeze the elf without thinking, and Tamika straightened, looking him straight in the eyes. Eyes that, he suddenly remembered, were still horribly red.

He swallowed back a wave of revulsion as he shifted back to his Aesir form. “You have my gratitude,” he stammered out to the little girl, while his brain chanted back _what use has she for your gratitude, knowing what you are?_ In fact, all the mortals still in the store must have seen, must know. The thought left him sickened.

Tamika, though, just shrugged, and her eyes looked older than the scarce few years past a decade she could possibly have lived. Something about that look reminded him suddenly and uncomfortably of Heimdall. Now that he considered it, they did share certain physical similarities as well. Were the gatekeeper not so staid and responsible, he would have fancied her to be the descendant of a mortal dalliance.

“It's no biggie,” Tamika said easily, as though fending off dark elves and seeing Loki's true form truly left her nonplussed.

He pulled Hela close again, shivering slightly from something other than the cold. “We should probably leave now,” he said in the most pleasant voice he could manage, tense and strained.

Tamika lifted a hand in farewell. “Sure. See you 'round.”

“Thank you for shopping at Ralph's,” the teenage employee called after them. The young man was out of breath and disheveled, but still wore a wide, false smile. Hela waved to him as they left.

* * *

 

That evening, once Hela had finished regaling her brothers with the story of her and Tamika's victory over the elf warrior, he switched on the radio in the small room.

After all, if he were to be run from town because of something people had seen, better to have advance warning than to be caught off guard.

“—truly unexpected turn of events,” the announcer said. “The citizens of the lost civilization newly discovered in the back storage room of the Ralph's were found frozen, still and solid—resembling nothing so much as a series of ice sculptures, each more gruesome and daunting than the last. We believe this to be the work of the ancient and mythical embodiment of chaos, or Luke, as we are told he prefers to be called, who, as you may remember, recently moved into the house that doesn't exist. Witnesses say he used dark sorcery to freeze the invaders. Store management asked me to extend their thanks to this ancient and mythical being, as not only were the invaders from a lost civilization causing significant damage to stock and _paying_  customers, the giant blocks of ice are expected to reduce refrigeration costs significantly for the near future.

“In marginally related news, a new fashion statement involving dyeing all exposed skin blue with safe, nontoxic body paints and using dark magic to achieve glowing red eyes has become popular with the high school population here in Night Vale. Remember kids, when using dark magic for cosmetic purposes, be sure to summon responsibly!”

Loki blinked. People had _seen_. People _knew_.

And somehow, they were not being maligned or disparaged or run out of town. Well, not that the Midgardians _could_  run them off, but...no one was trying.

He attributed the lack of hostility to classic Midgardian ignorance. They weren't bothered because they didn't understand what they had seen. It was good, he reminded himself, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

Still, something about the reaction sat uneasily with him.

“Papa, Tamika's in charge of the summer reading program,” Hel told him, still practically vibrating with excitement. “May I join?”

“I certainly don't see any reason why not,” he agreed easily, before catching himself. “That is, in the unlikely case that we are still here come summer.”

Hel only smiled, one of her small, knowing, self-satisfied smiles.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I have no particular warnings for this chapter, except maybe brief mentions of Night Vale typical child endangerment. Also, this is shameless fluff and I'm not sorry. Hope you enjoy!

Loki was bent over the stove, preparing something that had been labeled eggs and almost certainly wasn't (and trying hard not to think about what they might actually be) when the knock came at the door.

While the neighbors and other residents seemed friendly enough and eager to greet them whenever any one of them ventured outside, no one had knocked on the door since Carlos the scientist on that first morning. If the house was a refuge, it was one the citizens of this small town respected.

He approached the door cautiously, holding his magic close and casting a quick glamour to hide his sleepwear and still-messy hair. The door opened just a crack and he held it there, peering out and scowling. “Yes?”

“Sheriff's secret police,” a voice said. Loki blinked, and scanned the empty porch.

“Beg pardon?”

“We'd like to talk to you about your children.” Loki stiffened. A closer look revealed nothing on the porch but a set of chairs, the flying fish feeder that hung off one of the eaves, and a welcome mat.

He blinked again. He didn't remember the chairs being there before.

Now that he examined them more closely, too, there was something...off about them. Like they weren't precisely what they appeared to be.

“And what about my children?” he asked, keeping his tone frozen. He clutched his magic tighter, letting it dance across his fingertips behind the screen of the door. Anyone who tried to hurt or remove them would be in for an entirely nasty surprise.

“City ordinance requires all children be enrolled in school,” the chair on the right explained. “We'd be happy to help with the enrollment process.”

Loki almost choked. “You would have me enroll my children in your Midgardian school?” After all, the reaction to his children had been...uneasy in Asgard, stiff at the best and overtly hostile at the worst. And there they had been _royalty_ , princes and a princess by right, even if such went unacknowledged.

One of the chairs bent in a way that faintly suggested a nod. “It's the _law_.”

His first instinct was to refuse, to slam the door shut and destroy anyone who dared persist.

“A moment,” he said instead. The door closed and locked with a firm click, and when he turned back to the apparently empty room, he sighed. “I'm assuming you all heard.”

Fenrir slunk from behind the couch, and Jormungand slithered out of the coat closet. A wink of green magic revealed Hela and Sleipnir in the corner as the glamour that had disguised their presence dropped.

“We heard.” Hela looked up at him, eyes wide, and Sleipnir dipped his head in a nod.

“And what are your thoughts?” He carefully kept his voice neutral. “If you do not wish it, I will—”

“I'd like to,” Hela said, her voice quiet. “It's boring to stay inside all the time. I want to make friends.”

Part of him immediately jumped to the defensive, wanted to remind his little girl whose hopes had been dashed too many times that children could be cruel to those they saw as different, that while she and her brothers were clearly far superior to all other children, in Asgard or Midgard or anywhere else, others who appreciated their best qualities may prove difficult to find.

But he remembered Tamika in the grocery store, remembered Josie and "have you got baby pictures", remembered the radio announcer, Cecil, who'd insisted on an interview and proven impossible to intimidate, if only because he didn't seem to realize when someone was making the effort.

“Okay,” he said. “And the rest of you?”

Sleipnir whinnied his agreement, and Jormungand and Fenrir joined in with an equal amount of enthusiasm.

“...very well.”

He opened the door again and regarded the chair agents, still in their appointed spots. “Very well,” he said, addressing the rightmost chair, whom he believed had been the speaker in their earlier conversation. “For the duration of our stay, my children will attend your school.”

* * *

 

The process of enrolling his children in the Night Vale Elementary and High Schools, respectively, went surprisingly well.

Finding their equivalent Midgardian ages, and thereby the grade they should enter, had of course proved difficult. The administrator he spoke with ultimately laid a circle of bloodstones on the floor, chanted a complex set of spells, and summoned the ghost of a well-known expert mathematician to figure it out.

That the ghost mathematician's process involved labeled darts and a blindfold bothered Loki far more than the administrator, but he ultimately let it go. The conclusions seemed roughly to approximate his own understanding of how Midgardians aged, in any case.

Things went so well, in fact, that he found himself more surprised than he should have been to be called in on the very first day.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the young lady behind the desk said for the fourth time. “The basketball coach wanted to speak with you.”

“You will have reason enough to be sorry if you do not _tell me what is going on_ ,” he snapped back. “Your message said it had to do with my son?”

He tried very hard to focus on the contents of the message and not think about the way it had been delivered, which had been via a piece of paper tied to the leg of a particularly large trained spider.

“You'll have to ask Coach about that,” she said, looking distinctly nervous now. He supposed that was his fault—he had yelled, after all, and though few in Asgard found him intimidating, this was _Midgard_ —but he didn't have the spare energy to care. “It's highly irregular, sending urgent messages like that in the middle of the day,” she continued. “You should probably go see what happened.”

If she said anything further, he didn't hear, already out the door and hurrying down the hall.

The basketball coach was not difficult to find. He stood a ways from the edge of the basketball court, watching the practice, but turned and smiled widely when Loki sprinted in. “There you are, just the man—er, being—I was hoping to see!”

He was stopped by the sight of Sleipnir running across the court at an easy canter, obviously unhurt. His son glanced at him curiously but turned his attention back to the game. Something noisy happened, and the game broke apart, children congregating around the benches.

“Why,” he said, voice tight and controlled, “have you called me down here, in the middle of the day, with the obvious implication that I should be concerned for the welfare of my child?”

The coach scratched his head. “Sleipnir's here trying out for the team. Watch.”

Loki crossed his arms. “I'll not have my son mocked,” he said, letting a hint of ice creep into his voice.

The coach shook his head. “Watch,” he said, and pointed.

The whistle blew, though Loki wasn't sure from where. The referee might be a ghost. Sensible, given the high number of fatalities usually associated with the position. Parents with children on sports teams, after all, were the second most competitive type of person Loki had ever met.

The game started out normal, or rather as normally as such things typically went in Night Vale. Most of the players had a predictable number of arms, legs and heads, and they moved about in vaguely sport-like patterns. It didn't remind him much of the games of his childhood, but then, Aesir games had always been a bit more bloodthirsty than those on Midgard, even among children. Sleipnir stood in the middle of the action rather placidly, like....well, like a horse in the middle of a basketball game. Someone had modified one of the jerseys to hang around his neck. Other than that, he seemed disconnected from the whole.

Until, that is, someone on the team tossed the ball in his direction.

He reared up a little, somehow managing not to hit any of the other children, and, while perfectly balanced on four of his legs, he pawed at the ball with one of the other four, changing its direction and sending it straight through the basket.

A great cheer went up among the team and the cheerleaders. “Nothing but net!” A youth whooped, and Sleipnir ducked his head, looking pleased.

“He can do it every time,” the coach cut in beside him, startling him from his stunned observation. “Kid's a natural.” He dropped a hand on Loki's shoulder hard enough to send him lurching a step forward, and he might have stabbed the man for that had the next words out of his mouth not been “You should be proud.”

Tears did not well up in Loki's eyes at that, nor when he watched one of the cheerleaders flounce down from the stands to plant a kiss on the side of Sleipnir's muzzle. Night Vale was known to have very odd weather patterns, such that it could rain in a very narrow area, such as the space specifically around a single person's eyes.

“Normally we'd send him home with the necessary paperwork to join,” the coach continued “but we have a game tomorrow against our rivals, the Des—”

“I'll sign it,” he said, pulling a pen from the air and holding out a hand. The coach looked at him askance, but that probably had more to do with the pen than the magic. “This isn't actually a pen,” he said as a test, and the expression cleared. A lie, but an easy one that did no harm. Besides, the people here seemed to expect them from him, but not in the same disappointed or accusatory way he was accustomed to. Instead, they said the words _god of lies_  as though it were an eccentricity, an endearing quirk. The way they said it was almost _fond_.

The coach stood back and watched with an almost hungry expression as Loki signed the permission slip, then grinned widely as he took it. “We look forward to having him on the team,” he said, shaking Loki's hand.

Somehow, not even the way he proceeded to roll up the paper and eat it ruined the moment.

* * *

 

“On sports: our rivals, the Desert Bluffs Cacti, were obliterated on the courts tonight, both figuratively and...literally.” Loki settled deeper into the couch as he listened, with Hela tucked under one arm and dozing against his side and Sleipnir gloating palpably over his shoulder. “Following a stunning defeat at the hands, hooves, and other appendages of our team, the Night Vale Mountain Lions, several of the opposing team's players abruptly collapsed into sand. Or, perhaps, they were sand all along, and only took on a solid form in a dishonest attempt to beat us. I wouldn't put it past them, those sneaky, sneaky Desert Bluffs Cacti. For shame.”

Fenrir, curled up against his legs, whined. “No,” he said, “of course that wasn't me.” He would never attack children for the sake of a sports game. Although, in all honesty, the opposing team's players hadn't looked  _quite_  like actual children. Perhaps the "already sand" theory held some actual merit.

“If winning through such underhanded methods really was their goal, they must be _very_  disappointed right now,” Cecil continued cheerfully, “because we claimed our well earned victory by a margin of nearly one hundred points, thanks, in part, to the team's newest player, Sleipnir. He's a real basketball whiz, and, also, an eight-legged horse.

“On to traffic...” Cecil continued talking in his deep, steady voice, and Loki let his thoughts drift. The process of involving his children in classes and extracurricular programs had proven...surprisingly not terrible. Hela had come back from her first day of classes begging to join Scouts, and while some of the activities—like poison-dart tag and advanced Astral projection—seemed a bit concerning, especially with fragile Midgardians involved, he'd been assured participation was just as safe as day-to-day life in Night Vale, and considerably safer than visiting the library or interning in community radio.

Jormungand had, surprisingly, decided to join the debate team, while Fenrir opted for soccer. Both had brought back nearly identical notes that read “needs improvement in the area of: not biting other students”, but thus far no one had been seriously injured, so he wasn't terribly concerned.

Well, the subjects being taught did concern him somewhat. Hela had come to him confused after a teacher had told her mountains didn't exist. When he'd called to investigate, a disinterested teacher had dismissively suggested that if he didn't like the curriculum, he should join the PTA.

“We'll hardly remain here long enough for that,” he'd said at the time, and the teacher had only shrugged.

But he was not yet any closer to discovering what he'd come for. Whatever magic had drawn him remained here. He could feel it, just out of his reach, taunting him, but he'd no clue how to use it, to harness it. Such things could take time.

And in the meanwhile...he hardly wanted his children to learn to disbelieve in mountains.

“Perhaps I shall join, after all,” he muttered to himself after the show ended, as he shepherded his children off to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This chapter has content warnings for mental health-related subjects, including a panic attack and what probably qualifies as PTSD. If that is something you'd rather avoid, you can miss the worst of it by skipping to the first scene break, or feel free to hang on until the next chapter!
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Loki lay on his back in the grass, eyes squeezed shut, heart pounding. 

His breath came too quick, too shallow for him to get the oxygen he needed, giving the sense that there was nothing there to breathe, nothing but emptiness in his lungs. The thought made him shiver. He _could not_ , not after what he'd seen. 

One eye cracked open a sliver, just enough to tell him it was still there. His stomach flipped. It remained, no figment of his imagination, still hanging overhead like a cat stalking its prey, formless and depthless and empty. 

The _void_. 

He had no sense of how long he'd been there, trapped beneath the weight of his terror—hours, minutes, weeks, days. He was lost, he was falling, he was caught in the nothingness and every moment scratched across the scars in his mind like they were fresh wounds, still open, still bleeding. 

For ages he fell, alone, isolated, until a voice spoke in the darkness. “The difference is the ground.” 

He jolted, wanting to cast around in his panic but still frozen in place. Had he finally gone mad, now (again)? 

“You can feel it, underneath you, if you think about it.” The voice again, still startlingly close, with an accent that brought with it the images of cattle and prairies, fields and hay, almost shockingly mundane. The tone could best be described as unrelentingly calm. “Do you feel it now? Against your back, under your fingers. Solid.”

He reached out with his senses, pushing past the terror in an attempt to confirm the words, and...yes. Just an impression, something hard and solid against his back. The world stopped tumbling, even if it didn't quite right itself. 

“There,” the voice said. “Now if you take a deep breath you can smell it, too. The dirt, the grass. We're close enough. Can even smell the chemicals they used for the bugs. I don't hold with it, myself, but I can see what people are afraid of, what with last year's epidemic with the ear spiders.”

The breath exploded out of him, like it'd been trapped inside and eager to escape, and he gasped another one like a drowning man. 

“But feeling's the easiest way to tell,” the voice continued. “Can't be trapped in the nothingness with the Earth right there. Or you can, maybe, but the Earth's falling with you, and then at least you aren't alone in the darkness. Everyone else's there with you, falling with you, and that's comforting in its own way.”

Loki clawed with his fingers at the dirt beneath him, grasping handfuls to convince himself it was real and there. The way it lodged under his fingernails and sucked the moisture from his skin would have been unpleasant if it wasn't one more sign that he was someplace and not lost in the nowhere. 

Slowly, painfully, he squeezed his eyes open. The void still hovered above, empty and cold, and the sight sent a shudder through his entire body. He tore his gaze away and found the source of the voice. 

The man wore light, short-sleeved flannel, and had the sort of skin that reminded one of mud baked too long in the sun, wrinkled into a permanent expression of good humor. He reclined in the grass with his hands tucked behind his head, seemingly unbothered by the grass stains seeping into his overalls. A single blade of straw hung out of his mouth, and he chewed it slowly. 

“It's easiest when you're breathing,” the man continued, and the movement of his lips set the straw to bobbing. “You can feel it in the way your chest moves, rising, falling, rising, falling. Means it has something to push up against. Nice deep breath'll do it.”

Loki tried to speak, licked his lips, and tried again. “Who are you?” 

“The name's John Peters,” he said, glancing over to meet Loki's eyes. “Y'know, the farmer. And you're Luke.” It wasn't a question, but Loki nodded anyways. 

“What are you doing?” He'd managed not to look up for a bit, so the part of him that felt like a caged animal trapped in his chest had started to quiet. 

“You seemed like you'd fallen, so I joined you,” he said simply. “Trembling in existential terror of the void isn't a terrific thing to be doing alone.” 

Despite the steel bands still tightening around his chest, Loki scowled. “I'm not _weak_ ,” he insisted, and the faint tremble that crept into his voice made him want to incinerate something. 

“Never said you were.” John Peters' voice stayed calm, impassive. He pushed to his feet with a grunt, then offered his hand, and when Loki took it he pulled him up with surprising strength. He stayed careful, though, not to look at the sky. He kept his eyes on the ground, on the grass and the dirt and the muffins he had been carrying to the PTA meet, now scattered and squashed and ruined. 

“Never thought it, either.” He continued. “Enough folks do this it may as well be the town pastime. Besides, being afraid of the void isn't weak. It's _smart_.” 

Loki took another shallow breath and didn't protest, less in agreement than because he didn't have the energy to keep arguing. Every muscle in his arms and legs felt sore and slack, and bile crept up the back of his throat. When he tried to take a step forward he staggered, and he didn't quite have the presence of mind to push John Peters away when the other man grabbed his arm to steady him. 

“Can I help you back home?” He asked, voice still gentle beneath the lilt of his accent. 

“No!” Loki snapped, then took a deep breath. “No, thank you, I...” 

“I'm not so sure you should be alone right now.” 

He barked a laugh. “I hardly think I need a _mortal_  to tell me what I should do.” 

“Come now,” the man said, nudging him along as though he were a recalcitrant toddler. “Let's just get you back to—”

“No!” He said again, more forcefully, and an irrational panic trickled up the inside of his ribcage. “My children...I can't have them seeing me like this.” It was more than he meant to say, but the old farmer's expression didn't change.“It would worry them,” he added weakly. It would. To see his terror, the way he was so easily _broken_  by so little a thing—they would feel unsafe, unsure of his ability to protect them, or else they would worry for him, and that was not the responsibility of children. 

To his surprise, John Peters only nodded. “We do that, I think,” he said. “It's instinct, to try and keep the reality of how small and insignificant and powerless we truly are, in the grand scheme of things, from our children as long as possible. Some folks even manage to keep it from themselves. I've never been able to decide if that's foolishness or sense.”

Loki nodded, not because he understood, but because it meant that he wouldn't be forced to return, still shaking and disheveled, to frighten his children. 

“My place, then,” John Peters said after a moment. “It's a bit of a hike, but that might actually do more help than harm at this point.”

He started walking, keeping Loki to his side and half a step in front of him, hovering as though to catch him if he faltered. 

Loki kept himself steady through sheer force of will, because he would not, could not fall again. 

* * *

 

John Peters' home turned out to be a small farmhouse in the midst of empty fields. “Invisible corn crop's coming in nicely,” he'd said as they passed, and Loki had only nodded, unsure if he'd been joking. The walk had, indeed, steadied him. By the time they sank down onto the simple wooden stools around his table, his breathing had slowed to something almost normal, his heart still fast but no longer racing.

He let his eyes roam over the walls, which were decorated in a truly garish assortment of ceramic chickens, only snapping back to the present when a steaming cup of...something was pressed into his hands. 

“Fair warning, it tastes terrible,” John Peters said, and Loki sniffed it warily. 

“Is it some sort of medicine?” 

He shook his head. “Nope. Not everything that's unpleasant is good for you.” 

Loki took a sip and grimaced. The heat scalded his tongue, but the sensation grounded him. He wrapped his hands tight around the mug. 

Now that the haze of panic had started to fade from his mind, he found himself wondering what had possessed him to follow this mortal, to allow himself to be led about and brought home and given tea. Something about the sincerity in the man's eyes unnerved him. 

“I apologize,” he said at last. “I was not myself. That—it won't happen again.”

“Best not to make promises about things you can't control,” he returned evenly. “I doubt you meant to end up there in the first place. If it happens again, it happens.”

“It won't,” he insisted. 

“That seemed...bit more personal than most people's reactions to the void.” Loki remained silent, glaring into his tea. “But it's not my place to tell you how to cope.” 

“But I'm sure you'll try in any case,” he muttered to himself. 

John Peters shook his head. “Nope. Like I just said, it's not my place.”

The silence returned, and stretched even longer. “If it were your place,” Loki started, then hesitated. No part of him needed advice about how to handle himself. He could handle himself just fine. And yet...his reaction unnerved him, the way it had left him exposed and helpless. If another, less benevolent person had come across him, he couldn't say what might have happened. 

“Yeah?” 

“If it were your place to tell me, what would you say? Mere curiosity,” he added, striving for a casual tone. 

The room fell silent for long enough that Loki was sure he just wasn't going to answer. When the farmer spoke again, it was to change the subject. “Y'know what I don't like about bullies?” 

“And what is that?” He wasn't disappointed or frustrated, because that would require caring about whatever it was the mortal had to say, and he _didn't_. 

“They always pick on people where they're weakest,” he said. “You can't hurt someone with something they don't believe about themselves, at least a little. Doesn't have to be true, mind you, just hit a vulnerable place.”

Loki had nothing to say to that, so he took another sip of the awful tea and tried to hide the grimace. 

“If it was my place,” he continued, “I'd say that the void is a bully, one that tells folk they're alone, and small, and helpless, but it's only half right. We're small. In the face of the slow progression of time towards infinity and entropy, we're helpless. But we are never alone.” He nodded firmly to himself, satisfied. “Especially in Night Vale, what with the spiders always within a few feet of your person, the warm surveillance of kindly government agents, and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home.”

“The wha—”

“And that's important,” he continued as if Loki hadn't attempted to object, or had reason to, “because when we're scared, and small, and powerless, we can be those things together. Sometimes that's the best we can do. Sometimes it's even enough.”

“That makes no sense,” Loki objected, feeling petulant. 

“Good.” John Peters nodded. “If something makes sense right after you hear it, you haven't understood it hard enough.”

That sounded like a shallow excuse for nonsense, but he let it go. 

“I should probably return home,” he said instead. After all, the panic had faded to merely unease, a weak afterimage of what had come before, and he had reached some semblance of collected. When he pushed to his feet and brushed the remaining dirt off his clothes, he stood steady once more. The mug of tea he left on the table, still nearly full. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Don't be a stranger.”  

Loki nodded and made his way back to his house, careful not to look at the sky. Some sort of shuffling noise followed him through the empty (invisible corn?) field, but he refused to look at that, either. 

* * *

 

“And that brings me to tonight, and the end of our backwards calendar of all events that will occur in the foreseeable future.” Cecil's voice crackled through the radio, deep and comforting. “Tonight is our bi-monthly night of screaming in existential terror at the void. As a reminder, this event is held twice every two months, as no one involved in the planning can agree on what bi-monthly actually means.”

“We should go.” Hela's expression had set, mulishly stubborn in a way familiar to all who had raised children. 

“We will not.” Loki switched off the radio, carefully whispered an anti-possession charm over it (never again), and turned to face his daughter. 

Or, rather, his children. The four of them had grouped together, and were staring him down in a way that was patently unfair. 

“Everyone in my class is going,” she protested. Sleipnir tossed his head. 

He searched his mind for an excuse that wouldn't force him to explain why he had avoided looking at the sky for weeks, ever since that first time. He didn't find it. 

“Please?” 

It was the guilelessness in her eyes that persuaded him. Too often, he looked at his children and the eyes that looked back at him were too old for their age, forced to grow quickly in the wake of trials and tragedies. 

But now, he saw only an eager child asking for a chance to join in the “fun”, and he could not bear to spoil that.

“Fine,” he said at last, and her face split into a wide grin that almost kept him from regretting the answer. “But we shall not stay long.”

* * *

 

The atmosphere of the event was...confusing. 

In some ways, it seemed a normal sort of gathering to have in a park, or, at least, normal by Night Vale standards. Children darted about underfoot, his own soon among them. Someone had set up a grill and was preparing something he chose not to look too closely at. A few white plastic lawn chairs lay scattered about, but most had been appropriated for the construction of a large lawn chair maze by the Night Vale Preschool's pre-Engineering Club. 

And yet, the void still hung overhead, and none had forgotten. A few unfortunate souls seemed paralyzed by terror, as he had been that first time he encountered it. Others carried their awareness in the stiffness of their shoulders, the rigidity of their spines. 

And nearly everyone, regardless of what they were otherwise engaged in, would periodically look up and emit a piercing shriek of variable sincerity. 

Cecil wandered around periodically rating the screams, and Loki judged it was equally likely that they were on air as that Cecil was just being Cecil. 

“Nice one!” He said to one of the schoolchildren who had peeked upwards between their fingers and let out an exaggerated screech. “Good pitch, very emotive, excellent volume. Nine out of ten.” 

Hela let out a shriek of her own, and compared to that of the Midgardian children, it sounded nearly Eldritch in its intensity. “That was ear-splitting,” Cecil said approvingly. “But just a bit too gleeful. I also give it a nine out of ten.” 

“Come on, Papa,” she said, looking up at him with a wide excited grin. “You go.” 

He couldn't bring himself to shriek like a child, but her imploring look was difficult to ignore. He tilted his face up, locked eyes with the void, and channeled the chill that ran through him into an Asgardian war cry. He screamed, not in terror but defiance, allowed the sound be a channel of  _you will not make me weak, you cannot keep me broken, I refuse to cower in your shadow_.

For just a second, the crowd around them fell silent, their own screams cut off as they stared. 

“Too much scary, not enough scared,” Cecil said at last. “But I like the spirit. Eight out of ten.” 

He moved on, only turning back when Fenrir let out a long, mournful howl to yell back “eight out of ten, and an extra point for style” before Loki lost him in the crowd. 

A hooded figure hissed in a shriek of static. No one acknowledged it, which they all knew was what the hooded figure would prefer. Loki privately gave it a seven out of ten, then shook his head at himself. 

John Peters met his eyes from a little ways away, but, surprisingly, said nothing. He only nodded in acknowledgement before moving over to relieve one of the people at the grills, flipping over the somethings that Loki still refused to look at too closely. 

The crowd didn't take away his discomfort. The void still stretched above him, lurking like a presence peering over his shoulder, itching at his mind like a scab and raising the small hairs at the back of his neck. 

But still, having all these others around him...it helped, somehow, to not be alone. He was not comfortable, but neither did he regret coming. 

He came back from his thoughts to find Hel watching him. “We can go, if you need to,” she offered, though the look on her face left no doubt as to what she'd prefer. She glanced over at a group of her classmates, gathered in a circle and doing some sort of vocal warm-up exercise, and didn't quite suppress the longing on her face. 

“No,” he said, and shook his head. “I think we can stay a little while longer.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we have our second-to-last chapter! No warnings for this one save some Night Vale typical child endangerment.
> 
> Happy reading!

Loki adjusted the dial on the “Magic Meter” Carlos had loaned him, feeling remarkably silly. His own attempts to study the town's strange and powerful aura had stalled, and while the device seemed to respond to...something, even out on the outskirts of town, the area where the readings were most variable, turned up very little information that he could use moving forward.

He tucked the device back into a dimensional pocket and sighed. If the readings were going to prove unhelpful, at the very least he could stop to pick up groceries before heading home to make dinner.

The roads at the outskirts of town were nearly deserted on weekdays, so it was surprising when,  a little ways down the road, he passed a child hanging by her fingertips halfway up the front of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. He walked completely past before he stopped, took a couple steps back, and looked up.

She frowned in contemplation before carefully removing one hand and pushing herself a tiny bit higher, latching on to a barely-there handhold on the rock. Besides the fact that she was in Hela's class, he didn't really know much about her; they weren't in the same scout troop, and aside from Scouts all the not-Tamikas tended to blur together. Still, some sense of, if not parental, then adult obligation nudged him into a position where he could catch her if she slipped. “Shouldn't you be in school?”

She twitched, but didn't bother looking over her shoulder as she answered. “I'm in fifth-and-a-half period,” she called down. “I have Advanced Wandering until four.”

“Ah. And I'm supposing you don't have your Defying Gravity badge?”

“I'm not in scouts.” She reached for another handhold and missed; he flinched as she scrabbled and finally managed to catch hold of the wall.

“Then are you entirely certain you should be up there?”

“I'll be fine if you stop distracting me.” He bit his tongue, and silently watched her progress as she inched upwards.

It took time, but she made her way slowly skywards until she had nearly reached the large sign at the top of the building. Loki had adjusted his position several times to stay below her, but it looked like she might actually have the situation in hand.

At least, until she pushed herself to grab for a handhold just out of reach, and the momentum broke her grip on the wall, sending her plummeting straight toward the ground.

He reached out and caught her, falling to his knees with the impact to soften the blow. The tangle of hair and limbs and wide, terrified eyes looked up at him from his arms and promptly started to cry.

“Shh,” he said, “you're all right.” A quick diagnostic pulse of magic confirmed this, so he eased the child to the ground. “You're not hurt, and hopefully the wiser for the experience.”

“You saved me,” she said suddenly, looking up at him with the sort of wide-eyed wonder that he imagined Thor inspired on a regular basis. The thought turned his stomach, a bit—he was no hero.

“Yes, and hopefully you'll have enough common sense it won't be necessary again.”

She sniffled, and wiped her nose. “I just wanted to reach the sign,” she said, pointing up with a look that was quickly veering towards miserable.

He sighed. This wasn't something he'd done for a long while—usually, there were more practical ways of accomplishing the same thing—but he whispered an old, old spell, one that had won him a kenning, once upon a time.

Once the sky-path had set, he took the little girl's hand and took a step up, hanging, seemingly, over nothing. Her eyes widened, and by the third step, the tears had evaporated into an awed smile.

They reached the top quickly, and stood before the sign. “There,” he said, “now was this worth risking a broken neck over?”

She smiled and ran a finger over the closest letter, then dug in her pocket to draw out a crumpled roll of perfectly round stickers. She peeled off a tiny circle and stuck it to the sign, then started climbing down. He frowned. A dare, perhaps, issued by other children? An odd hobby? With this town, it could be a foolish tradition, or a new pastime, or an ancient and occult practice. It could be difficult to tell.

The sky-path deflated slowly as he released the spell, depositing them both back on solid ground. “There,” he said, a bit gruffly. “Now you can get back to wandering, and hopefully stay out of trouble.”

She looked up from where she had been trying, vainly, to stick a sticker on the spot where the sky-path had been (which looked a great deal like waving it around indiscriminately), and stuck it to his wrist instead with an impish grin. He frowned, but she ran off before he could complain, and the children of Night Vale were astonishingly good at vanishing, scouts or no.

He shook his head, dismissed the incident from his mind, and resumed his walk.

No sooner had he made his way back into the town proper, though, than someone had _poked_  him.

The first time, he was so taken aback he could do little more than spin around and gape at the woman who had prodded him in the arm. She walked away, seemingly unconcerned, and by the time he had gathered himself she had turned a corner and was gone.

The second time, a nondescript man who had once bagged his groceries at the Ralph's poked him in the center of his chest. One hand was already reaching for a dagger when a tiny flash of color stopped him short. Right in the center of his chest, exactly where he'd been poked, was a perfect little red dot, very like the ones the child had been distributing.

When he turned to look, the man was busily engaged with sticking little red dots to the sign in front of Big Rico's, the streetlights, and one on a large iguana sitting on a windowsill. When he came to the post office he frowned, pulled out a different roll of dots, and stuck a blue one on the front window.

Loki was so absorbed in watching the bizarre process that he nearly jumped out of his skin when another person passing by poked him straight in the center of his forehead.

“Good afternoon!” The offender said cheerfully, and he recognized Carlos, the scientist. Clusters of little red stickers dotted his ever-present lab coat, but most of them were tangled in his hair. “Where are your dots?”

“My...?” Loki looked down at himself, and back up, and wondered if this entire thing was an elaborate scheme to make him look foolish.

“It's Dot Day,” Carlos said, as though that explained everything. Then “Oh!” He leaned over into the street, carefully sticking a blue dot on the edge of a pothole. Another pothole a little ways down seemed to catch his attention, and he moved off.

Loki shook his head, only to realize as he did so that more of the little stickers clung to his cape, presumably stuck there while he was talking. He peeled one off and flicked it away with distaste.

As if that wasn't maddening enough, it continued unabated as he made his way towards the store. Everywhere he went the little stickers tangled in his clothing like brambles, and he quickly gave up on keeping them off. People stared if he tried, either in outright horror or, almost worse, disappointment.

Besides, it would be just like this town to have a tradition where people not covered in dots were devoured by shadow beings from a neighboring dimension, or infected with a plague of wild ladybugs, or required to bring an entrée to the next school potluck. Best not to risk it.

So by the time he ran into Cecil in the back of the Ralph's, trying to decide which type of breakfast cereal both Sleipnir and Hela would eat (Jormungand wouldn't eat cereal at all, and Fenrir ate pretty much anything), he was practically plastered in them, and itching, and annoyed.

Cecil was, for whatever reason, systematically sticking blue dots to every single can of asparagus on the shelves with a look of determination so fierce that Loki actually stopped to watch him.

He finished a moment later, a wild, triumphant look in his eyes, then pulled out a roll of red stickers and held one hovered over a box of over-sweetened cereal before he noticed Loki standing next to him. He altered his course and stuck it on Loki, instead, just below his ear. A pleased grin stretched across his face. Cecil himself was covered in red dots with one or two blue, with the majority clustered around his throat, piled so thick they looked like scales on a dragon.

Loki huffed, and scratched the spot hard enough he almost dislodged the sticker. “I don't suppose you'll tell me what's going on,” he muttered, which made the smile on Cecil’s face fade to something more intent.

“Is something going on that I should know about? Is it—” he lowered his voice, conspiratorial, “—newsworthy?”

“I mean the new decorating craze that's sweeping through town.” He waved a hand at the shelves, where a variety of things were speckled in primary colors.

Cecil actually frowned, then. “Didn't you listen to my show?”

“When?”

“Saturday,” he said, with something near a pout.

“Ah,” Loki said. “I'm afraid I was otherwise occupied.” When Cecil continued to look hurt, he added “I'm fairly sure the Librarians would not have appreciated my bringing a radio into the library.”

“Oh!” Cecil brightened immediately. “No, you couldn't do that. The Librarians would force you to write a thoroughly annotated bibliography, and then feed you to the feral books that live in the rafters.”

“Indeed,” Loki agreed. “So could you perhaps tell me what I missed?”

“Right.” Cecil flung his hands wide, very nearly knocking over a display of canned olives in the process. “It's Dot Day! Remember,” he intoned, as though reciting a well-worn proverb, “red dots on what you love, blue dots on what you don't. Mixing them up could have permanent consequences.”

“Oh.” Loki swallowed hard. So these stickers were some sort of judgment scale, a way to express likes and dislikes. He hadn't really been paying much attention to the color of the stickers, and he didn't look down. “I...I think I have to go.”

“Have a great day!” Cecil said cheerily as he all but fled the Ralph's, leaving the cereal and his cart abandoned in the center aisle.

He arrived home to find Jormungand curled up behind the couch and Fenrir on it, scales and fur plastered with the opinions of, most likely, their schoolmates. Hela, in the kitchen, stood on tiptoes to stick a red dot to Sleipnir's neck, then kissed his nose. He nibbled at her hair, the side that was the white of bleached bone, pulling a sticker out with his teeth. All four of them were dotted with color—no, with _a_  color.

Red. His children were awash in a sea of red. Of _acceptance_. More, even. _Red dots on what you love_. Suddenly he found it very difficult to breathe.

Hela froze and looked at him in that curiously knowing way she had, always so strange on her childlike face. “Papa, are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” he managed around the lump in his throat. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour, so be certain you are all prepared.”

He hurried upstairs into his own room and shut the door, then spun around, dizzy, to face the long mirror on the wall.

He caught his breath, and choked.

The bright primary colors stood out gaudy against the fine black and green leather of his clothes, the effect almost garish. They were everywhere, clinging to his cape like burrs, plastered to the skin of his hands, his face. They dotted his arms and his chest, wrapped around the front of him and behind, covering him, swallowing him.

And nearly every single one was red.

The colors blurred—even so, he could still make it out, at least until he squeezed his eyes shut. They _burned_. This shouldn't have the power to undo him, why should he concern himself with what a town of mortals thought of him or his family...

Hot tears carved tracks down his cheeks, and he had to hold back a shuddering sob so that his children downstairs wouldn't hear it.

A small paranoid part of his brain said _no, you are being mocked, surely this is some grand joke at your expense..._  and his reflexive reaction was to reject it, because if he refused to acknowledge it there would be no punch to the gut when it was pulled away.

But this place was...odd. Sometimes the things people said or did went in circles, but sometimes the honesty of this place staggered him, god of chaos, of lies. Every good lie had a grain of truth to it. This place, though, was like the truth around which the lie was built. Deceptively honest. A fiction with enough fact to cut.

It was a place where people told lies and _meant_  them so hard they became true. Where they could say, without a touch of irony or doubt, that up was down until it became fact.

If any place could say they loved a bunch of misfits and believe it, this town was the place.

Loki wasn't sure how he ended up on the floor with his back pressed against a wall and his head in his red-dotted hands. He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, clenching and unclenching his fists until his fingers shook, taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

He knew, though, what to call the hollowed-out lightness that stayed in his chest once the tears had stopped. It amazed him with its presence, its strength.

After all, hope was never a thing meant for villains or monsters.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who's reading along...red dots to all of you!

Today, it was the plants.

Loki had discovered, some time ago, that Cecil's show was often the best way to stay abreast of Night Vale's newest unlikely and unusual happenings, and that “this just in” essentially translated to “trouble incoming”.

So when his radio crackled to staticky life with a “This just in,” he folded the book he had been reading and set it aside, listening intently.

“Reports are coming in from all over town that local plants are coming to life. Ah, wait—to clarify, the plants were already alive, in the normal, sessile plant-like way that plants usually live and sit and grow and scheme, but have now begun to move independently and, it seems, to attack the less vegetative inhabitants with which they share this town. Sorry for the confusion.”

Loki huffed a small sigh. He trudged upstairs, pushed Hela and Fenrir's door open without knocking (they were at school, and likely wouldn't appreciate any damage the room sustained while he hesitated), and stared, resigned, at the small creeping vine she had been tending in pursuit of the concerningly-named ‘respecting and tending our botanical overlords’ badge.

The plant's name had been far less literal the last time he saw it, of course.

The creeping vine crept along the carpet, latching on with the little tendrils that grew beneath its leaves and heaving itself forward, leaving a trail of rich brown mud behind it. It didn't _see_  him—it didn't have eyes—but nonetheless, it hissed at his approach, curling back on itself. The first solution that came to his mind was ‘kill it with fire’, but while the idea tempted, Hela would be upset at failing the badge.

“Nice...plant,” he said hopefully, and reached forward, only to have the thing that had once been a creeping vine lash out and grab hold of his wrist. A jerk back freed him, but the plant continued to advance, rearing back and hissing louder than before. “Of course not,” he muttered. Sitting back gave him another minute before the plant reached him. Its coordination was poor, its progress slow.

Weaving the spell took only a fraction of that moment. His magic reached out and brushed against the wrongness that animated the vine, and it didn't take long to find and pull the correct thread to unravel it. Which, unsurprisingly, left him with a still-upended plant sprawled across the floor, trails of dirt ground into the carpet, and the beginnings of a headache.

As he tipped the pot back upright and started the process of scooping dirt back into it, a scream rang out from down near the other end of the street. He considered continuing as he was—after all, he could hardly claim responsibility for every soul in this town—but almost of its own accord his body pushed him to his feet and down the stairs. Traitor. He took a deep breath before pushing open the door and stepping out into the street.

Identifying the source of the scream took less than a second. A little ways off stood Cactus June, holding her baby close against her with one arm while the other, armed only with an umbrella, beat back a large, lumbering cactus.

A few strides brought him behind Cactus Judy, and he folded his hands behind his back. “I'm fairly certain you could outrun it,” he offered. “Cacti lack legs, and this one seems to be moving rather slowly as a result.”

Jade swung the umbrella again in a wide, sweeping arc, and it bounced rather harmlessly off the cactus' thick skin. “I'm not trying to get away from it,” she grunted. “It's _my_  cactus.”

In her arms, the baby let out a pitiful whimper. “I can hold him if you'd like.” Before he finished the offer, his arms were full of a very squirmy infant. He regretted the words near instantly. Jane used her new freedom of motion to brandish the umbrella in two hands, and she brought it down on the cactus again and again in a series of muted blows. After four or five of these, the umbrella snapped, hanging off at an awkward angle like a broken bone.

“And what,” Loki said, taking a couple of steps back with the baby to observe from a safer distance, “do you hope to accomplish by beating your cactus to a pulp?”

When she spoke again, her voice was near breaking, and Loki was mortified to see there were tears running down her cheeks. “I don't know,” she said, “I only want it to stop and go back to how it was.”

He sighed. The cactus, considerably larger than his own small houseplant, would be a true pain to unspell, and part of him had rather hoped to avoid doing so. “Here.” He pressed the baby back into her arms without ceremony, trying to avoid her eyes and the disconcerting amount of hope they held.

The spell required physical contact, and as he gathered his magic the cactus' slow progress brought it close enough he could reach out and rest a single hand on its crown. The spikes bit into his palm, drawing red drops of blood that beaded and ran down to his wrist.

A muttered word, a twist and pull of magic, and the cactus fell still where it had been lunging for him. Slowly, unceremoniously, it tipped over and fell into the street.

Cactus Joan rushed forward and tipped the cactus back upright with her heavy boots. A step and a hop brought her back up to her usual perch atop it,and she turned to face Loki. “Thank you,” she breathed, and he barely restrained the impulse to roll his eyes.

“Yes, I'm glad I could help you recover your...cactus.”

She reached down and ran a hand, protected by a thick leather glove, over the side of the plant. “I know it's not exactly a house,” she said, “but in a lot of ways it's still my home.” He must have looked reluctant because she added “A home doesn't have to be a house, you know. It doesn't have to be anything except what it is.”

Huh.

Something inside him twisted oddly at that. A strange noise pulled part of his attention back, and when he twisted around it was to find that the ivy that grew, improbably, up the wall on one side of his nonexistant house had come alive as well, writhing like snakes over the bricks and rapping the glass of his own bedroom window.

That probably should have concerned him more that it did. He probably should have put a stop to it, found a way to climb the wall and normalize the plant and add the exhaustion to the budding headache pulsing its way through the back of his skull.

Instead, he went looking for a certain scientist with ridiculously nice hair.

* * *

 

He found Carlos walking along the edges of Radon Canyon, taking measurements, and he broke into a jog. The scientist stopped to wait for him, but even so, by the time he caught up he was breathing a little bit harder with the exertion. “I think I've figured out the mystery of my house,” he said, and Carlos' eyes lit up. He leaned in, listening carefully in the way he had when Loki had first discussed magic and its theories with him. “It does exist, after all.”

Carlos frowned. “But the data—”

“It's not a house,” he said, and the excitement spilled out into his voice. “A house is a thing made of wood and stone, where birds may perch and leaves collect on the roof and the plumbing must be maintained. This isn't that.”

Carlos' skeptical frown slowly replaced itself with a look of curiosity. “Then what is it?”

“It's a home,” Loki said. “A home is not necessarily a tangible thing. It is a place of shelter and security, of comfort and provision and,” he swallowed, hard, “it is a place of belonging. It exists. I may not have a house, but I have a home.”

Carlos had set his measuring-instrument aside, and was taking notes with his not-pen. “You know what? I think you're on to something,” he said. “I mean, it's not the sort of thing that would make sense anyplace else—”

“But we aren't anyplace else,” Loki finished for him. “And it is exactly the sort of thing that might happen here.”

“Yes,” Carlos agreed. “I see.” He lowered his voice. “So, you have a home.”

“I have a home.” His eyes stung a bit as he said it; probably from the radiation emanating from the depths of the canyon. “I've never—I'm not sure exactly what that means, to be perfectly honest.” He barked a rough laugh, and wished the second he'd spoken that he hadn't.

Perhaps it was ridiculous to think that Midgard, that Night Vale could be their home, but this was a place where the ridiculous became reality.

“Well,” Carlos said, and Loki could hear the stupid grin spread across his face without even looking up. “I'm sure there's plenty of people here willing to help you figure it out.”

* * *

 

“I think I'd like to take this outside,” Josie said, lifting the cup of tea he'd just poured her. “Care to join me?”

He nodded and followed her out to the porch. The stars hung low and bright in the sky tonight, soothing, with no trace of the void. His children had long since shuffled off to their rooms and to bed.

Josie patted the bench, making sure it wasn't a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police before sitting down, and Loki sat beside her.

“So,” she said, settling back and wrapping her fingers tight around the edges of her mug. “Are you going to tell me why you had me over?”

Loki didn't meet her eyes, only clasped his hands together in his lap and scratched at his left palm. “I think I've decided to stay,” he said quietly. “Here. In Night Vale.”

If the news surprised her, she didn't show it. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No,” he said. “But I found what I wasn't looking for, and that may be more important.”

She nodded to herself over her cup of tea. “I thought so,” she said, then added “the angels do love stories about coming home, you know. Some of their favorite, I'm told. The one lost sheep coming back to the fold and all that.” A small smile crept over her wrinkled face. “No reason to stop at lost sheep, either. Or sheep at all. The more the merrier, here.”

He looked up at the stars, searching for familiar constellations. He found none. The stars were strange, yet they still, somehow, felt right. “Even if it means you've invited a wolf into your midst?”

“Especially then.” She turned her face to stare off into the distance, as though the sky and the stars and the floating lights would offer up their mysteries for her perusal. Perhaps they did. “Even the wolves of the world need someplace to call home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels weird saying "the end" when this is technically a prequel.
> 
> Also, this fic might be finished, but there's a very good chance of more in this series! I'm enjoying myself immensely, and I'm so happy that other people are enjoying this with me. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
